


None So Blind (As Those Who Refuse To See)

by Katlady2000



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:55:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 24,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23420080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katlady2000/pseuds/Katlady2000
Summary: This story is based around Quantumsilver’s wonderfulArrogant. Please read her story first.
Relationships: Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway
Comments: 7
Kudos: 25





	1. Kashyk

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Voyager/Devore story. As usual, I just can’t take unhappy endings. While I’ve given this an R for descriptions of violence, it does have a happy ending. 
> 
> I had Arrogant saved and wrote my story from that. Quantumsilver had taken her story down and she very kindly reposted it for me. She did rewrite some of it but I’ve left mine as it was as it basically still ties in. Thank you soooo much, QS. I more than appreciate your permission to write this and for reposting your story. Hugs.
> 
> Thanks also to audabee who is posting on my own site and on AO3 for me because I’m thick as two short planks with all that techno stuff. Hugs to you too.

I stare out over the water and try to find the inner calm I had until so recently. It eludes me now and I wonder if I’ll ever regain it. I was at peace with myself, gratified with a long career well served – no regrets – and no ghosts coming to haunt my quiet moments. ‘Some’ would say no conscience. I lived in the present. The future was of no concern to me. I accepted that I was far closer to the end of my days but considered my life well lived and was satisfied with that. My past was a place I rarely visited. I felt no regrets - no remorse. Why should I? I’ve had a spotless career – been decorated with high honours and accepted ‘my retirement’. I live well and comfortably. Oh, there are brief moments when I miss it all but mostly, I’m content. All that is for the younger amongst us…the next generation.

How quickly all that can change though. I sigh deeply and shake my head then move slightly to get more comfortable. My ‘advancing years’ tell on me physically even though my mind is as sharp as ever.

I continue my study of the sea, only half aware of the birds which sweep and weave above it. Peripherally I see him shuffle along the quay before he looks out over the water also, perhaps wondering what holds my attention. He knows I’m well aware of his presence. We worked too closely together over the years and developed an almost telepathic awareness of each other. I laugh at that thought and see his head turn to look at me.

“What could be funny?”

I shake my head again. “A stray thought.” I nod to the empty space on the bench beside me. “Sit.” It sounds like an order. Old habits.

He makes a small noise in his throat, obviously thinking the same thing but he ‘obeys’ and eases his tired body down onto the warm wood.

We’re silent for a moment as I gather my thoughts and then I speak. “Well, is there anything to it or am I just…….?” I sigh deeply. I never thought I’d revisit all this. I believed I’d put it away, just like all the rest.

He takes a moment before speaking. “Are you sure you want the answer to that?” And with those words, he’s already told me but there is still that grain of….hope, perhaps.

Finally I turn my head and look at him fully. He’s avoiding my eyes and now I’m more certain than ever. “Tell me. You may as well.”

He nods at that. “You understand that the details are….sketchy…at best. It’s not something that’s spoken of. It’s conveniently ‘forgotten’ for the most part….not something anyone wants to admit to. Probably why we never heard anything or were never told about this.”

I nod a grudging acceptance to that. “I understand.”

Finally, he looks at me. “I called in many favours to get this…information.” He’s just stating a fact, not looking for praise. That was never his way. “It’s not general knowledge because… I don’t know. Maybe embarrassment for mistakes or bad decisions made…or it didn’t matter as much as we thought. Perhaps some involved were ‘connected’ and there was a cover up for their sakes. The reasons are probably many and varied.”

I nod at that. “As always. It’s politics. Regardless, what IS known?”

He settles back and takes a deep breath. “You’re sure you want to hear this?”

I think a moment. Perhaps I should leave it. Not knowing would be best but at the same time I know that the ‘unknown’ can haunt far more than the facts. I force the name to my lips and let it escape almost as a curse. “Janeway.”

I see him tense at the name but he keeps his thoughts on that to himself. I know her image is in his mind. He nods and lets out a long breath. “Yes…”

There’s no hurry really to hear this but delaying won’t make it any less true. “Just give me what IS known.”

I see his old hands ball into fists and there’s a tightness to his voice when he speaks. Shades of the man past. “I told you she survived Interrogations and was successfully transferred to the Centre.” I nod. That was the last time we’d spoken of her and I’d put her from my mind then. Until now. “They apparently considered her...broken…no threat.”

I laugh at that. “Fools. Their mistake.” Or maybe mine. I dismissed her too quickly and easily – too caught up in my victory.

He nods agreement. “She ‘appeared’ so. Broken and beaten down. Her ‘injuries’ were severe but were mostly healed.” He shakes his head. “Someone apparently considered that she had something to offer…some knowledge…some ‘usefulness’. In whatever way, she caught their attention.”

He shifts in his seat…to find comfort for old bones or to give himself a moment. “Someone….I couldn’t find out who, took her on. What she was used for is unknown. Whether for her mind or her body…her uniqueness…I don’t know.”

I bring her image to my mind. I remember her as I last saw her. She physically held no appeal for me but men have many different and varied tastes. I ask a question I’ve often pondered. “Did you ever…..?”

The look of total disgust I see on his lined face answers that one. “Never. I had standards and so did my men, despite your ‘fair game’ ruling.” He smiles smugly then in memory. “I had other uses for her body. She was a great ‘training exercise’ and ‘teaching aid’ for some of my men.” The smile fades. “Later, at Interrogations, I had orders though – not to go all the way. I knew ‘someone’ wanted her alive.” He looks at me and speaks hesitantly. “I had wondered if perhaps it was…….”

I laugh at that. “You thought it was me?” The tone of my voice tells him to leave that alone. I look away. “I meant it when I said she wasn’t my type. My only interest was in bringing her down, humiliating her and taking her ship. The thrill of the chase and the capture at the end.”

I glance at him and see that he accepts that. “I thought so. It was just a thought at the time.”

I acknowledge that with a slight nod. I never asked Prax for details of or about his treatment of Janeway. I didn’t really need to. I knew well how prisoners were treated, interrogated and tortured and with his particular hatred of her, I knew it was probably worse than most. I’d seen what he did to her on her ship and knew that was mild to what would come later. Basically, I just didn’t want to know. Oh, not because I cared in any way. It was just of no interest to me and besides, I didn’t give a damn. The Interrogations bored me, to be honest. I always preferred the chase and capture. The emotional beatings were my area of interest, not the physical. Oh, the physical had its place and could be useful, even amusing, but I quickly lost interest. It was merely a means to an end. Anyway, all that screaming was annoying and tiresome. It irritated me. 

I sigh softy. “Go on.”

His curt nod tells me he understands to stick to the ‘facts’. “She was given to and kept with whoever took the interest. As I said, I couldn’t learn who but I know it was someone on Herros Two…apparently in the main settlement at Cava.”

I nod at that. The settlement at Cava was sizeable and housed Interrogations, the Detention Centre and many large mining camps along with a medium sized residential area and an industrial and ship building depot. “And the crew?”

He shrugs. “From what I could gather, they were divided between two camps on Herros Two…also at Cava.”

I turn my head sharply at that. “Only two? And on the same planet…the same settlement? Whose bright idea was that?”

He shakes his head. “As I told you, not that many details are ‘available’. Apart from the three who died on the ship, the rest were sent to those two camps…with the exception of ‘Janeway’.” Her name is distasteful on his lips and I know he’d rather not say it.

I mull that over and nod. “Continue.”

He looks down at his hands. “They were in two camps…put to work. Treated the same as all the others there.”

I wait for him to continue and don’t comment. I know they’d probably have been treated a bit better than telepathic prisoners but not by much.

He sighs heavily. “They were put into the camps and forgotten about. You know how it is. There’s always the next shipment. It’s too much paperwork. Too much trouble. Too time consuming. Things get lost between the cracks.” He shrugs. “This was a large group, much bigger than they were used to dealing with at the same time. Separating them into small groups and transporting them to many different camps would have been extensive work and time consuming. In Interrogations they were together but controlled. We concentrated more on the higher ups in the group. Our dealing with the senior prisoners, and letting their screams be heard, easily made the lower downs fall into place quickly, although we did let them share in some of the fun.” He smirks at the memory a moment. “I would assume they did the same at the Detention Centre. It was a tried and trusted method. At the camps, it would have been harder.”

I shake my head. “And having a larger group explains their sloppy work? It excuses their slipping into lazy ways?” The tone of my voice is like ice.

He sighs. “It’s possible they were just overwhelmed with the sheer number of such a large group….”

I feel myself lose it. “Overwhelmed? Overwhelmed?” I lower my voice as two older men passing by look towards us. “They weren’t paid to be ‘overwhelmed’. They were supposed to be better trained than that...more professional.”

It’s as if he feels some need to defend them. “Yes, but…you know what it’s like there for the men. Duty at the camps isn’t actually… Well, it’s not exactly challenging work and….”

I draw in a deep breath to regain some control. Besides, I know he’s right. I nod at his words. I know well how it works. “I know. No one wants it. Assignment there is almost seen as punishment. They resent it and take it as a personal slight or affront…almost an insult.”

I shake my head and calm my thoughts. “What of the ship?”

He glances sideways at me, his voice almost hesitant. “It was taken to Cava Shipyard for inspection.”

I close my eyes a moment. The fact that the shipyard is also on Herros Two, at the same settlement, suddenly doesn’t surprise me. Someone made some very stupid and lazy decisions. It was sloppy work. I remember the ship well though. “She was a magnificent vessel. Cava was hardly equipped for her. She deserved better than that.” I laugh to myself. It was the one thing Janeway and I had in common…a love and respect for a fine ship. It angers me though to know that Voyager wasn’t given the care she deserved. It’s not strange to me that I care more about the ship than I do about its Captain and crew. “Do you know what work was done on her? Was she used as part of our fleet or taken apart for study?”

I know by him that his answer is going to be uncomfortable for him. I can still read him well. His hands clench into fists again. “The ship was left there. From what I learned there was a cursory inspection but little more. I think it was taken up a few times for brief test flights and to keep it ‘ticking over’ but nothing more.”

I face him fully, disbelief on my face. “A fine ship like her?”

His expression is one of mild annoyance. “It was just a ship. Nuts and bolts. Nothing compared to ours.”

I raise a hand. I know we’ll never agree on this. “All right.” I rein in my anger. “So Voyager was just ‘there’ at Cava. Janeway was the property of ‘someone’ and the crew were in two camps. And all this is on the same planet, at the same settlement.” I don’t know whether to laugh or scream at the stupidity of it all. “I’m not sure I want to know the ending to this.”

He gives me an almost nervous look, again telling me much without words. He speaks though. “As I said already, details are ‘vague’.”

I laugh sarcastically. “Really? I can tell you exactly what happened and I wasn’t even there.”

He tries to school his expression. “Go on then.”

There was a time I’d have taken him to task for speaking to me in this way but we no longer wear the uniform. I let it go. “Somehow…..they found each other.”

He nods slowly. “How Janeway could have found the others though……”

I smile but it’s not a pleasant one. “I would say she easily fooled whoever had her. She probably slowly earned their trust. Maybe she whored herself. I wouldn’t put it past her.” I remember her trying that with me. My eyes narrow. “Somehow she probably gained access to a computer and…”

He shakes his head. “She wouldn’t have had the language skills…”

I give him a look that questions his intelligence. “Let us assume that her ‘someone’ somehow had her translator…her ‘comm badge’ or whatever they called them… and gave it to her in order to understand her and for her to understand him. Let’s assume that she learned our language quickly.” I want to laugh. “Basically, she was underestimated.” I know I’m just as guilty of that crime.

He frowns. “How would she have contacted all the others though…or found them all?”

I stare at him. “You’re telling me…….” I draw in a deep breath. I can’t even consider it. “All of them?” I should have known she’d never leave anyone behind.

Once again he refuses to meet my eyes and avoids the answer. “I don’t understand how she’d have contacted them…….”

I drop my head back as the answer hits my brain. My words are whispered. “Of course. I should have foreseen…..”

He sits forward. “Foreseen what”

I want to laugh, hysterically so. I can’t believe this. “She didn’t need to find them physically.” I can see he still doesn’t get it. “Think, man.” I laugh again. I didn’t think back then but she did. “They spent so much time with the telepaths.”

I see the light dawning in his eyes and he provides his own answer. “It ‘rubbed off’……left a residual…” It was always suspected that too much contact with telepaths had this side effect. It was the reason my men were rotated often, why the guards at the camps worked at a distance and were interchanged too.

I let out a slow breath. “We’ve seen it several times before. Heard stories. It lingers. She didn’t need to see them to communicate with them. And there was already a strange bond between her and that First Officer of hers…and the Security Chief.”

Prax sighs heavily. “Who was supposedly already in possession of some kind of telepathic abilities. And there was another like him.” He closes his eyes.

I study my hands a moment. They show my age. “And there was that Borg.”

The man beside me lets his anger show more, thinking more like me now. “How could they have been so stupid and inept. They’d have been worth so much.”

I’m not sure he wants the answer to that but I know all this will stay with him and he’ll think long and hard about it. In the end, all it will do is shatter his past illusions. I shrug slightly. “So we can assume they were ‘in contact’ with each other.” He nods slowly. “What happened next?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. There was talk that they had help.”

I look out over the water again. Rumours of ‘sympathisers’ on that world and others have always abounded but have never once been proved. However, if anyone could have found their network, it was Janeway.

I slowly turn my eyes back to the man beside me. He seems to have aged in the time we’ve sat here. Without looking, I’m sure I have also. “So…assuming with help…they somehow got to their ship. Is that about the jist of it?”

He nods without meeting my eyes. “Once again…no details.”

I nod slowly in resignation. “And there never will be. This is not knowledge they’d have ever wanted known. Word of any escape, even any attempt… Had that gotten to the prisoners…” Prisons have often been shut down when an escape happened. The power of ‘no escape possible’ can be as effective as a hundred guards. Knowledge of that kind could be fatal…even if it just provided some vague hope to the inmates. No politician either would want it known. Elections are won and lost on such matters – on any world.

I struggle to take all this in as I try to calculate numbers. “Were any deaths reported from the crew? What about that so called ‘chef’? Did he live?”

He shrugs. “I believe so. Something about him having detailed personal knowledge of this Quadrant… Who knows?” He shakes his head.

I nod slowly and I harden my features. “So…a hundred and forty something people just walked away and got to their ship?”

I sense his growing resignation before he even looks at me. “One hundred and forty six people at the camps – split into two. In each camp – about seventy three or so…”

I almost smile. You can take the man out of the job but not the job out of the man.

He sighs and shakes his head. “That’s out of many thousands – who, over time, just blend in. The guards have always stated that they all look the same in the mines after a few days. No counts are ever made because it’s impossible – too many and too time consuming - and also no one ever believes anyone could escape because where would they go that they wouldn’t be spotted immediately.”

He has a point but it’s hard to swallow. I have to ask the final questions now but I believe I know the answers. I just need confirmation. “They somehow got to their ship, didn’t they?”

He’s watching the birds flying over the water and in some way it’s appropriate. I laugh sarcastically and tie in with what he’s watching. “They just flew away?”

He turns back to me and our eyes lock. I have to ask one last question but deep down I know the answer I’ll receive. “Did they get away?”

He doesn’t answer immediately but then he doesn’t need to. Finally he just nods. I can’t take this in. “No one noticed that ship just taking off?”

His answers are almost wooden now. “Who would? Who would even consider it?” He pauses a moment and then his voice rises, speaking in a way he never would have in the past. “Do you have any idea how many ships were in that yard…ours as well as the other confiscated ones? It’s a vast complex. Besides, the ship had been taken up before, as I said. Ships came and went all the time. And there’s always only a small skeleton staff there, usually those near retirement or no longer physically fit for any other work. They probably just assumed this was another test flight, if they were even there. It wasn’t manned every day.”

Anger and disbelief war within me. “So we had a few badly and half trained incompetent idiots, half asleep and uncaring, not giving a damn…if, as you say, they were even there at the time.” I glare at the man beside me. “Were they even questioned at all? Was there any fallout for them? Any punishment? Was anyone questioned? Were any records kept?” I can answer my own questions. “Probably not or you don’t know.”

His sigh is confirmation. I add a sigh of my own. “Tell me, Prax. Were we the only ones doing our jobs back then? Were we the only ones taking it all seriously?”

He shrugs. “At the time, I would have said ‘no’. Now, I’m not sure. There was a lot of success. The camps were full so we must have done something right and we didn’t do that on our own so others must have taken their work as seriously.” He shakes his head. “I suppose it’s like any work. For some it’s a career or a calling, almost a vocation - and for others it’s a job, just a job - a means to an end – that end being a payment to enable them to live their life, support their families and pay their way. I suppose also, for the lower downs, they just feel they weren’t paid enough to care.”

I know he’s right. Low pay leaves men open to shoddy work or corruption to make up the difference. That’s often overlooked by those at the top. Loyalty mostly has to be paid for. It’s seldom earned. Strangely, I believe Janeway had that earned loyalty.

I draw myself back, still unable to accept all this. “It was so brazen and in plain view that no one questioned.” He reluctantly nods agreement. “And when the ship didn’t return? No one gave chase?”

He shrugs. “That’s more of the ‘unknown’. There was talk of the help they received. Even talk of assistance arranged by those they ‘saved’ as some sort of thanks. Some underground network. I heard one story of the ship being hailed and questioned out there and some of us answering.”

I rub at my face and nod. I have another piece of my answer now. “Defectors.” He barely nods. There has always been rumours of defectors in the Devoran world. I used the ruse myself with Janeway. Somehow she found some. Maybe I gave her the idea.

Another thought strikes me. More questions. These are thoughts I should have had years ago – questions I should have asked then. I let this go too soon and far too easily. “Did anyone find out if there was a backup for their Doctor? I mean, really dig into their computer system? Did anyone study his emitter or check if there was any way they had the schematics to replicate another? Most importantly, did anyone think to change Voyager’s command and operating codes? Was Janeway’s owner questioned?” I know the answers even before he shakes his head.

“No one knows anything about the Emitter, despite how valuable it was. It’s likely, more than possible, that it was left on the ship. Their computer hadn’t really been studied at that time and I have no idea who her owner was although there was a vague hint he was untouchable…connected and wealthy. Probably would never have been questioned. No way of knowing.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “So we assume they just got clean away?” You could cut metal with the tone of my voice. I notice it doesn’t have the same effect on the man beside me as it used to. Too much time has passed.

He sighs heavily. “All I know, inasmuch as I can know, is that the ship left Devore space. I got that from a few ‘sources’.”

I’m still torn between wanting to laugh and rip someone’s throat out. “Their plan was so simple and easy…so pure in its execution. That’s the beauty of it and that’s why it was so successful. Everyone would expect a plan where one hundred and forty seven people escaped to be beyond complicated. It succeeded because of its simplicity. They simply ‘walked off’ onto the ship and left. There was no elaborate plan. They just took off.”

Prax studies his feet. “You believe they all left the camps together.” It’s not a question.

I nod. “Yes, as mad as that sounds. Anyone who witnessed it would probably have assumed they were part of just another work detail. No one would think anything else. They were most likely accompanied by a bribed guard or other helper. Hiding in plain sight.” I clench my fists and then release them. “This is unbelievable. Our greatest writers couldn’t have made this up. It’s beyond belief. She…they…had the luck of our demons.”

I close my eyes a moment. My questions keep coming. “How long until their absence was noticed? Was it that evening when they didn’t return to the camps?” There’s no answer. “The next day or so? The ship must have been missed immediately.”

His voice sounds tired. “Their absence from the camps was only noticed when someone realized the ship was gone and couldn’t trace it. Someone was apparently sent to check but… Maybe they assumed they’d been moved or had died. It’s impossible to locate anyone in the camps once they’ve been integrated. They weren’t found anyway.”

Why am I not surprised at that? “And when was the ship missed?”

“Not immediately.” He’s stalling. “They assumed it was on test flights or had been relocated without notification when its absence was noticed. It wasn’t exactly the only confiscated ship there so it wasn’t missed at first. Vessels come and go there all the time, as I said, and there’s no real records.”

I ball my fists. “So how long?”

His answer is quiet. “I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

“You must have some idea.” I shake my head in exasperation. “Make an educated guess.”

He almost sounds afraid to answer. “Probably 3 or 4 months…”

I almost choke. “What?” I don’t believe this. “Security and record keeping was a nightmare. The sheer incompetence is like a bad joke. This could have happened with others before or since. Could still be….”

He shakes his head. “Not after. Things were apparently tightened up afterwards – quietly, of course.” He doesn’t sound convincing.

I actually laugh at that. “Right. Until they grew lazy and complacent again.” He ignores that but tries an answer anyway.

“As to before… I doubt it. It was such a unique combination of things – and of course the help they had.” He tries to take the sting out of his words. “I believe it was a one off.”

I sigh and shake my head, almost wanting to laugh. “But if it wasn’t, it was probably a well-guarded secret. Allowing one ‘mistake’ was bad enough. They’d never have admitted to more.”

He attempts a vague excuse. “Even though these prisoners were different…not the usual, they’d have been treated the same and after a short time, looked the same…”

That falls flat. I want to hit something. “All the more reason to keep a closer watch and guard them better…separate them…”

I rein my anger back in. It will get me nowhere. We’re silent for a while, each absorbing all this and thinking back over the years. We must appear as just two ordinary old men taking in the sea air in this retirement community, reminiscing about the past.

“Kashyk?”

I turn. It’s the first time he’s used my name since we met here today and the first time he’s used it without my title. Of course, neither of us has a title anymore. Still, for just a moment, it irks.

“What?”

He studies me a moment before speaking. “Why did you, after all these years, ask me to find out about her? Why her and why now? What made you think of it…her…”

I wondered when or if he’d ask me about that. Up to now he’s asked no questions and just done my bidding. Just like always. I decide that after all this time, after all the years we spent serving together, he deserves an answer. Maybe I just need a friend. I laugh inwardly at that. I look at the man beside me…at most a colleague. Neither of us began a family…always married to the job. At one time, I thought he was in love with me but now I know the ‘job’ was his only love. Now we just have experiences in common……….memories.

I dig into my pocket and pull out the data chip. “I received this recently. No idea who sent it and no way to trace it.” I examine it in my hand. “It’s old…not like the current data chips we have.” He frowns as he looks at it resting in my hand. I save him the trouble of asking what’s on it. “I believe it was recorded many years ago and that instructions were left with someone to deliver it to me in time.” I smile softly, despite myself. “As to what’s on it……..” I slip it back into my pocket. “There are no words on it…no text…and yet it speaks volumes.” I see his frown continue and put him out of his curiosity. “It’s music. Mahler and Tchaikovsky. They speak it all.”

I can see he remembers and understands the significance only too well. He turns to watch the sea again. “Guess that answers the question once and for all about sympathisers on our world.”

I sigh. “Yes, it does. And only she could engender the loyalty of whoever sent me this…especially after all these years.” I know I could open this up and try and trace her ‘someone’ but I’m pretty sure he’s either dead or well protected – untouchable, as Prax heard. Perhaps he even left with her. I’m not sure I care enough anymore in any way.

Prax frowns now, his mind still on the job, tying up loose ends for himself. “How would she have gotten the music? She’d hardly have taken the time to download it on the ship.”

I shake my head. “Like all such things…information and data gleaned from taken ships that wasn’t considered sensitive, it was probably downloaded onto the public cultural database. Once she’d found access, it would have been simple enough.” He nods in understanding and acceptance.

A strange thought comes to me. I turn and meet his eyes and draw in a deep breath. “Do you have any regrets?”

He’s somewhat thrown at my question, so removed from what we’re been talking about and I see him frown but he recovers quickly. “Regrets? I think you’re asking if I feel any remorse.”

I nod. “That too.”

He shrugs and thinks a moment. “Regrets? No. As I said, I had my orders and did my job. Remorse? I don’t believe so. Maybe I occasionally get a bit soft with old age and wonder if…” He sighs heavily. “To be honest, I enjoyed it…the power…the control. Now and then though, I wonder if there is something after this world and if there’ll be some…retribution. And the odd time, I remember a face or hear a scream. In the end though, I can’t go back and change anything. It’s what it was so I push it away.”

I study him. “Does that work for you?”

He nods at that then shrugs. “For the most part. What about you?”

I think about that a moment. ‘Mostly the same. I tell myself it’s who I was – a product of my upbringing and training and so on, but I know it was more than that. Like you, I enjoyed it. Orders and training and doing my job… There are times I see that as an excuse for being what I was anyway. Any doubts I have are just, I tell myself, a product of age.” I smile to myself. “Old men, I think and believe, fear more than young men. It’s the unknown of the near future, rather than the distant future. A life after this where we pay for our ‘sins’? I don’t know. I can’t know. So, like you, I put those thoughts aside. Well, I did until now. I can’t undo or change the past or bring back the dead so I have to live with it.”

He laughs at that. “And hope for the best?”

I sigh deeply. “I suppose. What else is there?”

He offers an answer. “Some would say repentance. A search for forgiveness. According to the spiritual advisors at the Temples anyway.”

I consider that for just a moment. “Mmm – must be nice to have such faith and beliefs. I don’t believe it’s in me though.”

“Nor in me.” I wonder if his answer is just to agree with me or if he really believes it.

I actually laugh. “So are you saying that we were just a pair of sadistic bastards who enjoyed it all too much?”

He doesn’t smile. “We were doing our jobs. Obeying orders.”

I think we both know it was a lot more than that. Besides, that excuse has probably been used throughout history on every world. “So, we accept what cannot be changed.” I state this as a fact – not a question.

He nods. “I think so.”

I sigh heavily. “Well, we’ll find out someday – or not.” Amazing the excuses we make and the lies we tell ourselves.

Despite what I’ve just told Prax, there is that element of fear in me that I….that we…will pay for our actions, although I suppose some would call them crimes or sins. We can always console ourselves with the fact that our actions were endorsed and sanctioned from the top, that we were simply carrying out our orders and that our actions and how we carried out those orders was never questioned as long as we kept capturing telepaths and our quotas were fulfilled. But regardless of what my old comrade says, I believe he shares that fear. All men do. I wonder if Janeway would approve of absolution for me. Would she offer salvation?

We’re both silent for a time and then I stand slowly, my body stiff after sitting so long and move towards the quayside to look back out over the sea. I don’t know whether to laugh or scream in rage. I know one thing though. It’s all down to arrogance. I only saw Janeway’s arrogance yet it was that very arrogance that got her through in the end. But it was also arrogance that let her and her crew get away. While HER arrogance led to her survival and that of her crew – it was OUR arrogance that let and enabled them to escape. Oh, I can tell myself that they didn’t escape on their own merits, that they were let escape and that they had help. I suppose I just don’t want to credit any Gaharay with intelligence.

The truth is that I underestimated them. We all did. And so many arrogant mistakes. They were dumped together as ‘just Gaharay’. We were too arrogant to ever see the individual or their intelligence. That same arrogance assumed that once we had them, they were rendered ineffective and unintelligent…automatically beaten and broken. We failed to consider that the most dangerous animal is the one who’s cornered. Between my own personal arrogance in my victory and the arrogance of those who dealt with her afterwards, none of us saw her or them as anything other than ‘just more beneath us Gaharay’. I and they totally and badly misjudged her and them. And that same arrogance of hers remained. She couldn’t just leave. She had to thumb her nose at me – give off one final shot across my bow and leave her final message for me to receive many years later after they were safe. 

I blow out a breath. Despite all our work over the years, the numbers we’ve taken in, there are still telepaths out there and probably always will be. We can never seem to get on top of their numbers or eradicate them, and maybe that’s how this happened. We took on too many at one time. While the Inspectors like myself were highly successful, maybe too successful, the lower downs were overwhelmed by the numbers.

I drop my head back slightly. I try to tell myself that I actually no longer care really. I’m not paid to care anymore. I have my pension. I laugh inwardly at that…my mindset now reflecting that of the guards back then. This all happened on someone else’s watch – in another department. I did my job and handed them over. I had pride in my work back then, as had Prax. It was something lacking in others. We were some of the few, despite what Prax believes. The later failure was theirs alone – not mine or his. Oh, the incompetence galls me but they don’t deserve me caring either way. They got what they deserved for their shoddiness. However, it was my fault I underestimated her. That lies squarely with me.

And maybe this was a one off with so large a group. Learning now though how lax things were there and knowing for sure of sympathisers and the help available, I’d say there were others, maybe never even missed. It’s possible it was only one or two at a time but it was still escapes. We assumed no one could escape because they’d stand out as a prisoner. Of course, if there was that help available, they’d have given them clothes. But then due to the treatment they received at the camps, they’d have still stood out – unless they were hidden until they healed.

All these ‘ifs’ and ‘maybes’ and ‘possibles’ – I could drive myself insane with that train of thought. I have to stop that. Oh, I could ask questions but I doubt I’d get any answers. While I felt, and still feel, important in the system, I doubt they’d see me as such. At best I’d be thanked for my interest then politely reminded that it was well in the past, that I was retired and that the matter was closed and had been dealt with. I’d be told politely not to concern myself with the matter. The unspoken message would be ‘mind your own business’ and ‘it’s nothing to do with you anymore’. I’m yesterday’s man and this world really doesn’t have time for such people. I never had in my day when the ‘older and past’ members hung around Headquarters, unable to let go. They were figures of pity and I don’t wish that image for myself. It’s all just something distasteful I have to swallow.

I draw in a deep lungful of the sea air. It would have been nice to have that perfect record but that’s gone now. I know I shouldn’t take it so personally but their failure after my success feels like a personal insult. I want to blame Janeway but I know I can’t. She just did what anyone would have done, given the chance, even if I hate to admit that. So, while those Government records reflect that full success, I will now always know differently and what I know matters more to me than those records. I’ll always know they’re false.

I glance back at Prax, believing he’s just giving me space for my own thoughts but he seems lost in his own. I look back out over the water. This is all because no one ever expected the unexpected. It was just assumed that something like this could never happen – no one ever even thought of or considered something like this – much less that it could occur. It was assumed that no one would ever escape – could never escape. There were never any contingency plans for what was believed to be impossible. So, were there others? We’ll never know.

I draw in another deep breath of the salt air. I’m angry but then I remember how long ago this was and that there’s nothing I can do about it– and it eats at me that I’ll never know for sure what happened or exactly how she and they did it. I comfort myself briefly with the knowledge of what I did to her and what I took from her – what she would have suffered on the ship and afterwards on Herros Two - but then I know that if they made it home, it won’t matter to her. Her arrogance would have told her that she got it all back. Well, most of it. She’ll have mourned the few she lost but then gone on to fulfil her goal.

I wonder what her life is like now, if she survived, that is. What about him? I wonder if they ever came together, if she finally opened her heart and allowed him in. I look at my own empty life, with only past glories for company, no one to wonder where I am or care, no one waiting at home to ask about my day or share the long evening hours. If I’m totally honest with myself, I’m alone – lonely even. And no one will miss me when I die. There will be token mourners at my funeral, there to be seen with each other but not for me. By the next day, they’ll forget me. A part of me wonders and maybe hopes she chose a different path. Memories of the past is not a comforting bedfellow.

I try to shut off those thoughts, disgusted with my brief weakness at allowing them. As hard as it is to admit, in the here and now, at this stage, when all is weighed up, Janeway won. 

Janeway. Damn her. I’ve said her name more today than I have in all the years since I first came across her. Is her name now destined to haunt me for the rest of my days? I remember calling her a bitch, thinking of her like that. I want to hate her, despite not having any feeling for her at the time. She was just another – one of many to beat and humiliate.

Maybe it’s my older age, the amount of time that’s passed – too late now to do anything about it even though I’m only hearing about this now - or perhaps I’ve mellowed, but whatever it is and no matter how hard I’m trying to fight it or deny it, I have to be honest with myself. There’s this grudging sense of admiration there for her. I laugh to myself at a thought. She’d have made a great Devore Inspector. What a waste.

I sigh deeply. I’ll never know if they made it home. Did the next race they came across do worse to them or were they blown out of the skies? I’m not ever going to know. I can torture myself with this question or I can let it go - imagine they got home or didn’t. I can almost grudgingly believe that she and they deserved their escape after our ineptitude, our incompetence and misjudgement.

What I do know though is that there is one certainty in all this. I made a decision years ago to simply forget her – put her from my mind because she meant nothing and was just one of many – never to concern me again. She’s made sure that’s impossible now. She’s made sure I’ll forever remember her and them. The name of Janeway will be with me to my grave.

I rub at my face, so different now than the one she’d remember. The man I was wants to think the worst for them and yet somewhere deep inside, if I allow myself to lift the lid on it, there’s a tiny glimmer of respect and admiration for her. She was a worthy opponent in the end and the only one who ever beat me and while that galls me, I know that if I’m ever to have any hope of regaining any of the peace I had until so recently, I have to let this go. 

I turn and study Prax and manage a smile. He looks up at me this time. “Come on. Let’s go. I have a sudden fancy for a coffee.” I laugh at his puzzled look. “I’ll explain on the way”.


	2. Kathryn

I stare out over the water and watch the birds getting ready to roost for the night. The sun is beginning to set and there’s such a sense of peace here. I look up at the sky and see the first stars beginning to twinkle as if telling the sun to move on, that it’s their turn now.

I sigh softly as I watch the so familiar constellations, a sight I thought I’d never see again, never thought any of us would see again. I drop my eyes to the water and feel the familiar thought come. Not all of us got to see them again.

I blow out a long breath and push that thought down. I know it’s hard but I can do this now. It took me a long time and countless hours of counselling to learn but I’ve finally accepted that the dead already have their peace. They don’t want to take mine.

Regardless though, I can’t help but drift back. I’m strong enough now that I can do this without so much of the earlier pain. I’ve learned to let that go, knowing that to hang onto it will be to give in to that bastard and that’s something I still, and always will, refuse to do.

I let the memories come…allow myself to remember.

* * *

Seeing them strut around our ship…our home…with such arrogance. And swarming over the Bridge, their filthy hands touching her consoles, and it felt as if they were raping her.

The unanswered questions. Would they use her for their fleet or would they strip her and rip her apart for whatever they could get from her, destroying all she was? I wasn’t sure which was worse or what I’d cope with best but I believe I would have preferred to see her destroyed rather than know she was used to take the lives of telepaths and God knows who else. I never wanted her to have innocent blood on her in that way.

And Neelix. Poor, sweet and innocent Neelix. My tears flow as they always do when I remember what he suffered. I thank every Deity that he survived what they did to him. And that bastard made me watch as they cut off his hands and cut out his tongue. His screams will forever stay with me and haunt me. I again thank those Gods that they spared his life. I begged with everything I had in me and for some reason, they didn’t kill him. I’ll never know why and at this stage, it doesn’t matter. He lived and that’s what’s most important.

My face hardens as I allow the memories to scroll past in my mind. Prax. I still feel so much hate for him too. He had such a personal hatred of me for some reason. I actually suspected that he was in love with Kashyk and hated me for taking any of his attention away from him. Perhaps he hated women. Maybe, of course, he was just like that with any ‘Gaharay’.

I almost smile at how easily I can now say those names. That took some time but I eventually learned to say them without it hurting. They’re just words, names, sounds. They can only hurt if I let them. I lick at my dry lips. It only took months of counselling to get to that point. 

I remember the beatings he gave me and his sheer sadistic enjoyment of them – the pleasure he took. I remember the pain, unrelenting and the memory of him kicking me in the forehead so hard that I almost passed out. I was sure he’d inflicted brain damage. How he tied my hands, the coward. I remember the constant kicks and punches to my ribs and wherever else was exposed as he pulled me around between his men, ripping out handfuls of my hair. I close my eyes at the memory of their painful groping, not for sexual enjoyment but to produce as much fear as they could. I have the satisfaction of not having shown them that fear which of course angered that bastard more.

And oh God, I remember them taking me to the cells and seeing my crew treated like cattle in cages…seeing their fear and despair and knowing I wasn’t able to help them. That helplessness was worse than any beating. And the bodies. Three had been murdered, killed by energy burns because they’d packed them in so tightly and they hit off the restraining field. And Naomi. I didn’t see her but the thought of the terror the child must have been going through made me sick with worry. I prayed that she’d be left with her mother.

I didn’t see Chakotay and the other senior staff. I knew they’d been held separately and apart from each other. I gained some satisfaction in knowing that they’d had some fear of them that they wouldn’t put them together.

I remember Prax taking me back to my Ready Room and seeing that bastard lying back in my chair, his arrogance and smugness pouring off him. Prax shoved me to the floor and they laughed at my pain. Kashyk sent his men out but I knew they were watching for the coming show. His aim was pure humiliation and I knew he needed his audience.

I remember the knife and him cutting my clothes away. Oh, he enjoyed that - his power over me. I pleaded with him to let my crew go – twice if I remember correctly – and played right into his hands – giving him what he wanted, but I didn’t care. I offered myself to him and he so delighted in that also. I didn’t care about that either. He saw it as my humiliation and I let him, but I saw it as my strength, a sacrifice made for love that he could never understand. I’d have taken any punishment, sacrificed anything, even my life, for them. He could never have made sense of that. He tried insults, belittling me in his mind, telling me I wasn’t attractive, was so average and past my prime and so on – that I wasn’t good enough and wasn’t his type – told me I really was that arrogant and that I was nowhere even close to being worth an entire ship. It meant nothing to me but I couldn’t let him see that. He took my reaction to his insults for what he wanted and needed for his own sick and sadistic pleasure, when all it was to me was failure that I couldn’t trade myself for my crew. He never had any intention of letting any of us go.

I remember him ordering them to take me back to their ship and telling his men that I was ‘fair game’. I felt too broken at my failure at that moment to care what they did to me. Of course, he had to have his ‘last shot’…something about the symphony being terrible and Mahler and Tchaikovsky being a joke. I would have expected better of him. It sounded childish and pathetic…much like him. I didn’t even turn to look at him. I carried my one satisfaction from that room – the fact that I’d gotten the Telepaths free and had stopped him from destroying the Brenari Wormhole. We both knew I’d always have that.

My time in the cell on their ship was a blur of pain – of beatings and whatever tortures they could invent. And there was more of their groping and crude insults but the rapes I’d tried to prepare myself for didn’t happen. I guess I really was beneath them – probably the only advantage to being a ‘Gaharay’.

Prax found plenty of other uses for my body though. He used me as, in his words, a ‘teaching aid’ for his men. I was tied hanging from the ceiling and beaten and tortured, cut down and kicked around like a rag doll and every other ‘pleasure’ they could think of. He used me to show the most ‘profitable’ pain points and how best to get me to scream as they broke my bones. And I did scream. Constantly. They took me far beyond any human endurance then semi healed me for the next round.

I learned only later that they’d all heard my almost constant screams and that pains me more than anything they did to me. I didn’t think – couldn’t form any coherent thoughts – but had I known or been able to think about it, I’d have tried harder. I tell myself that, of course – but I know deep down no one could have been that strong or withstood that pain.

They whipped me, lashed me, kicked and punched me as much as they could. I was spit on and one of them even urinated on me, showing off to the amusement of his comrades. Thankfully, that was a one off as far as I know. I remember lying on the cold floor in a pool of my own blood and other bodily fluids, unable to stop my body shaking and seizing – and I remember the stray thought of wondering if the Doctor was around and then the despair and pain of remembering that they’d confiscated his Emitter and deleted his program. Another life stolen.

I have no knowledge of how long it took us to get to what they called Interrogations. I only learned later that the planet that housed it was called Herros Two. Very imaginative name. I didn’t see the others and that pained me most, the terror of not knowing where they were being taken or what awaited them. Would they survive?

I know now that I was in Interrogations for a month and that I no longer fear any religion’s version of Hell. Once more I prepared my mind for rapes which never came, thank God, but they couldn’t have been as bad as what I did survive. I had thought the cell on the ship was the extent of their horrors and evil but it was nothing compared to what was to come. Beatings again – drugs – medical experiments, exams and studies – probes – lights on and off - and screams from others played to me when I was shut away – all I believe to mentally torture and perhaps drive me to madness – and it almost worked. For a time, I was back in another prison many years before, and the screams were from Admiral Paris and the faces around me Cardassian.

I remember my muscles spasming and locking, stomach churning and cramping, teeth grinding and clenching and my body convulsing. My self-respect and dignity threatened to become distant memories as my body would let go – urine flowing from me and faeces smearing my thighs, hot and sticky, vomit and mucus erupting from me to almost choke me along with the stench.

I remember gasping for air and fighting for every breath when they’d tie or hold me down and put cloth over my face then pour water over it, their form of ‘waterboarding’. I remember coughing and choking, spitting up blood and vomit and foaming at the mouth, my lungs burning. And how they’d burned me with something and laughed at my screams as my skin blistered and oozed blood and fluid. I constantly passed out but they always brought me back with cold water thrown over me or with drugs to face another round. Everything was a sick and perverse entertainment to them.

I fought and struggled to tune out their cheers and jeers as they hosed me down, delighting in my weakness and determined to degrade me. The words ‘only my body…only my body…’ became my mantra. Starfleet training. So, I tried to push my shame away.

What I fought most was my tears, my despair and loneliness for Chakotay and the others. I couldn’t hide my physical pain but I fought hard to hide the emotional. I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing that. I couldn’t control my body or what they inflicted upon it. I could only control my mind, and I fought hard to do that. I didn’t always succeed.

So much inflicted on me and some I can no longer remember, which I’m not sure is good or bad. I came so close to breaking during that time. I came so close to giving in and letting go completely.

Only two things saved my sanity, even if one of those almost convinced me that madness was upon me. I could hear Chakotay’s voice in my head…and then Tuvok’s…and others of the crew – but mostly Chakotay’s and Tuvok’s. Somehow, I just knew it was their voices. If it was madness, I began to welcome it – grasped at any ray of hope or comfort I could find. The voices kept telling me that they were with me, pleaded with me to hang on – to survive and fight. And I did. They comforted me and brought me a semblance of peace in the fires of Hell I inhabited.

The other thing was ‘him’. He appeared at odd times and places and I began to discern a ‘letting up’ on the horrors they inflicted on me but my abused mind couldn’t connect anything like a real thought to work it out. He watched me when he was there but his face was expressionless. There was no enjoyment showing as there was on every other face that filled my vision. At times my struggling mind thought I saw sadness and pity in his eyes.

After what I learned later was a month, I was taken to the Detention Centre and healed to a higher standard. The food and water there was of a slightly better quality than the stale liquid and meagre slop grudgingly given in Interrogations to barely keep me alive. Subsistence level didn’t even cover it. The creatures that resembled rats there ate better. They were treated better too.

At the Centre, I was still locked in a kind of cell but was thankfully left alone. And then ‘he’ was there again, watching and studying me. I had thought I’d feel fear, wondering if this was where the expected rapes would come from now that I was somewhat cleaned up - if this was my purpose here – what I was destined for? I began to quietly study him now too. He was an older Devore but had none of the evil sneer that the others had. He just quietly watched me on and off until one day he smiled at me. I didn’t return his smile and just continued to watch him warily. Seeing anyone else was better than seeing Prax and his men though. They no longer came.

During all this time, I could still hear Chakotay, Tuvok and some of the others in my head but I still believed I was losing my mind or was imagining it. They didn’t always come to me and were quiet at night but they did ‘visit’ and comfort me. Chakotay told me he knew I’d survive and begged me not to give up hope. I didn’t hear actual words spoken. It was more a sense of knowing what he was telling me and who he was. I desperately hung onto my ‘voices’ despite my fear of schizophrenia or some other mental illness. They were my only comfort.

And then came the day when ‘he’ entered my cell, the guard opening the door for him. He smiled again and held out his hand. My suspicions were sky high until I looked into his hand and saw my comm badge, something I’d assumed was long gone. He smiled at my shock and offered it to me. It took me a moment to decide that, trick or not, I wanted it, the only link to my life outside of my voices. I fleetingly wondered why I hadn’t been given my comm badge before, why they hadn’t tried to get information from me but just as quickly I realized that anything they wanted to know, they’d have learned from Voyager’s database and logs. It had been torture for torture’s sake and to break me down.

And then came what I expected. Able now to converse with me, my watcher told me that his name was Nerha. He also told me that I would be going home with him. I pushed back on the bed away from him but he just smiled kindly at me. He quietly told me it wasn’t what I was thinking, that he just wanted to get me out of there. He explained that I could work for him and nothing more.

I studied him for several minutes, having no idea what ‘work’ he wanted from me but in the end I just nodded. If it came to it and I had to sell myself, I would do it. Starfleet still resided within me. It was burrowed deep. I needed to get out of there and if that was the price for any vague hope of escape and finding the others then so be it.

Nerha watched my face closely and kept smiling. I was sure he was almost reading my thoughts and wanted to laugh at that but I’d forgotten how to. Eventually I just nodded my agreement.

Within a few hours I was living with this man and the strangest time of my life began. I started to keep track of the passing of time as best I could and tried to note the days but I had no idea how long or short a day was here. I watched everything and tried to learn what I could. And in return, Nerha watched me. I waited for what my mother always referred to as ‘the other shoe to drop’ but so far it hadn’t. My ‘owner’, as I thought of him, still watched me, studied me almost. He only asked that I help in his house and garden and keep him company, nothing more. I didn’t speak much and he didn’t ask anything of me.

Nerha fed and clothed me, and gave me my own room and bed. I could see outside but couldn’t make out any other dwellings. As tempting as it was to escape, I knew I first needed more information about where I was and how things worked.

My voices continued and comforted me but I began to notice that they were more tired sounding…weaker somehow. I also began to get senses with the voices. I’d feel hot or cold with them, deep tiredness, even hunger and thirst – many times pain. I tried to make sense of all this but couldn’t. I was still recovering from my injuries and what I’d been through and put it down to that.

Suspicion was my constant companion, but despite that, Nerha slowly began to earn a semblance of trust from me, no matter how I fought it. He was kind to me and treated me well, even asked my permission to use my name. The only physical contact he made to me was a pat on the back or a squeeze of my hand. My distrust waned into wariness and then into a surface level of relaxing in his presence.

We began to talk more and I shared simple details of my life with him. I learned he was wealthy and from an old and well-respected family on his world - that he no longer worked but still did some consultancy assignments. And he told me of his wife, Sela, who had died. They’d never had children. I saw his loneliness and need for companionship and a strange connection began.

Our first laugh together came when I cooked for him. It didn’t look good and tasted even worse. I knew nothing of Devore food except what Nerha gave me and had no idea what went with what. He was so polite to me but in the end, he couldn’t take any more, nor could he hide his laughter. Eventually, I joined in and it was a breakthrough for us.

One day I was cleaning in his study and recognized what I felt sure was a computer and ran my fingers over it. I sensed him behind me and turned quickly, snatching my hand away. I expected to meet with his anger or some punishment but he just smiled and asked if I’d like him to teach me how to use it.

So began ‘our lessons’. He taught me about his world and encouraged me to learn his language. He seemed to have total trust in me. Always though, I sensed that he was seeing more in me. He constantly told me that he wanted me to feel comfortable in his home, that he knew what I’d been through. He told me he wanted me to trust him but that he knew it would take time. And then he also said that he was trusting me. Seeing my confusion, his hand reached up and cupped my face. For some reason, I didn’t pull away. He closed his eyes a moment, then smiled and nodded and told me it was time.

Everything changed at that moment. Nerha sat me down beside him, pulled me against him and began to talk. What he spoke of changed my world as it was at that time.

I know now that this man placed all his trust in me and I know the enormous risk he took. Over the next hours, he told me that he knew my thoughts and feelings – that he had telepathic abilities and had been drawn to me in Interrogations and at the Centre. He spoke of how his late wife had also had these abilities and how they’d learned to mask them in order to hide in plain sight on their world. I learned that there were many in the Devore world like them – well trained and secretive in their abilities and also well hidden. Their network had never been discovered, so intent was the Imperium on hunting outsiders. They never saw what was right under their own noses.

He assured me that he would never delve too deeply without my permission. He smiled and told me also, with embarrassment, that I was safe with him, that due to a medical treatment some years back, he was impotent. The treatment had worked and saved his life but this was a side effect and how it didn’t matter to him anyway because he would only ever have wanted to lie with his Sela.

And then he told me that he knew about my voices and what they meant and I finally understood that I wasn’t mad, but was, in fact, hearing my beloved crew. I was hearing them and feeling their emotions and sensing what they were going through.

He explained about how residual telepathic abilities, picked up from those we had helped, could be transferred. He was sure my people contacting me was because they had discovered this from others in their camps. The help we’d given would have become known there through the other prisoners. It explained why I hadn’t heard them on the ship. My fledgling abilities would have been hidden from my tormentors and from myself, by my pain and suffering. Prax and his men had been enjoying my agony too much to discover it anyway. Likewise, my crew’s abilities were masked from the guards by the others in the camps.

I also discovered that he hadn’t just randomly found me but that he already knew of me because of the help we’d given and been telepathically led to me. He told me of his sorrow of having to leave me there to ‘go through the system’ but that anything else would have invited questions, aroused suspicions and perhaps exposed people and cost lives. He knew, without my having to tell him, that I understood. He’d not been suspected because many wealthy and connected people visited the Detention Centre to seek people for themselves for either domestic service, slaves, manual labour or ‘other uses’. He didn’t need to explain further. The very wealthy and connected citizens like himself, were permitted to enter Interrogations. Most who went there visited to feed their sick enjoyment of what they could watch. I saw the effect what he’d witnessed had had on him as he sought my forgiveness for what he’d seen me suffer. Their ‘letting up’ on me was because he’d claimed me but I had still had to complete their ‘treatment’. He’d claimed me at that stage in case I was picked up by someone else at Interrogations or at the more accessible Detention Centre. I learned that he’d paid and bribed those there for me, just as others did for their wants. It was how many guards earned extra. It was how he’d also gotten my comm badge, a guard having found it and who thought to sell it, seeing it as another way to earn something extra.

Having gained my trust, Nerha now insisted on getting me extra medical treatment. He’d seen some of what had been inflicted on me and wasn’t satisfied with the ‘healing’ I received at the hands of the so-called medical staff at Detentions. In Interrogations, there was no real healing – just patching up to survive another round. Nerha insisted I see his own healer who was a kind and gentle man I came to know better later on.

Nerha then taught me how to ‘contact’ my people. And I accepted it and grasped all he told me. My suspicion warred with my desperation but he knew that and constantly tried to reassure me. In the end, I put my total trust in him and I slowly learned to read him also.

Nerha and I began a journey I will never forget. We developed an amazing friendship as he helped me. I began to share his bed but it was for comfort. We held each other and ‘cuddled’, talking quietly into the early hours. In the darkness, we planned and plotted. I no longer feared ‘the other shoe’ as he told me of the people he knew and trusted who could help me and of the information he was able to procure for me.

During the day, Nerha trained me and helped me contact Chakotay, Tuvok and the others. He helped me to ‘open corridors’ and taught me, and by extension them, how to move from our earlier desperate ‘please hang on’ thoughts to actually passing information. He worked with me to ‘amplify’ my messages to them and pass on how they could do the same by sending messages together. It wasn’t like a comm call where we could speak a conversation but more a sending and receiving of feelings and images – sharing understanding and knowledge. It was scary at first having all this in my mind but I learned quickly to accept it. I imagined that this was perhaps something like Seven had known when she was with the Borg.

Between our link and Nerha’s contacts, I knew now that my wonderful crew were alive…all of them. I learned that Neelix was still living and that Naomi was in domestic service of some kind but permitted to return to the camp at night to the others and could be with her mother. All this came to me in dream like feelings and images which I had to learn to unscramble and trust, backed up by the information Nerha found out for me. I forced myself to concentrate on the fact that they were alive and not think about what they were suffering. We could deal with that later and I prayed that we’d get the chance to do that.

Nerha met with people he knew and trusted – people in the network, as he called it. He wanted to impress on me that not all Devorans were like the ones I and my crew had known. He explained about how it was a military world where influence, wealth and power ruled. He passed under their radar because of his status and age - and his family’s long standing wealth had kept him out of the military. He would never be questioned no matter where he went as long as he appeared to toe the line. He had never drawn their attention.

From Nerha’s contacts, I learned that my crew were divided between two camps in the same settlement area where I was, called Cava. They were brutal regimes and the work back-breaking but they were all alive, if you could call it that. They fought to survive because they had each other. The unique bonds formed on Voyager were keeping them alive and fuelling their hopes and determination to keep going. These things, along with their ability to connect with each other, was their daily bread and what kept them fighting. It was their comfort…their solace.

My best news came one evening from an excited Nerha when he returned to the house, having met with some of his friends. I learned that our beloved Voyager was on this world, in the same settlement, and that she was still intact. It took Nerha placing my hands on his face and forcing me to ‘read’ him before I finally believed him. He told me about the Cava Shipyard and how badly guarded it was. I couldn’t believe how lax their security was or how careless they’d been putting us all in the same area but I wasn’t about to question it.

At first light one morning, Nerha managed to get me on board Voyager so I could see if she was in working order and would be capable of taking off. There were only two workers on site who wouldn’t begin their shift for hours and no security surveillance. I couldn’t decide if it was easy, luck, a trap or slapdash security.

Once onboard, I wanted to cry but forced my emotions down as I checked what could be checked. I was stunned to find that the auxiliary battery cells power level had been set to re-charge on a monthly cycle which kept a basic minimum power level at all times so it was never a completely cold start which would have taken hours. Thank God a ship is rarely completely powered off in any space faring world. And I couldn’t believe that they hadn’t changed any command or operating codes. I was constantly terrified that it was so easy – too easy. I looked inside my Ready Room quickly and felt Nerha’s hand on my arm. The surge of emotions that hit me almost knocked us both over. Memories of my last time there - then disbelief that nothing seemed to have changed, were overpowering. There was even an unrecycled coffee cup on my desk.

With knowledge of Voyager’s condition, Nerha and I finally put a plan in motion. He arranged to have someone ‘keep an eye’ on our ship then organized for his friends to slowly meet with me, in ones and twos. Because Nerha trusted me, they did too, especially once they met with me and read me. We plotted and planned and I began to feel shades of my old life returning. The Captain was still alive in me. I tried hard to convey these feelings to my crew, desperate to give them more hope.

One night as we worked out plans, I sensed Nerha looking at me and met his eyes. He knew my thoughts. He hadn’t intruded but they were strong enough to reach him. And I felt his. We both knew that our time was growing short and I read his deep sadness but also his happiness and acceptance that this was the way it was meant to be. Later, I asked him if he would come with us but he turned it down, citing his age. Wordlessly, I read his real reasons. This was his home and there could well be others, like me, that he could help. I knew that, at great risk to themselves, Nerha’s friends and others, often smuggled what they could, relief parcels - food and medical supplies etc, into the camps. It was a drop in the ocean but they at least helped some. This was a part of why he would stay, why his healer told me he would stay also when I asked him. With Nerha though, I knew that mostly he would never leave his beloved Sela. When his time came, he would lie beside her. I understood that and I accepted it.

The next piece of the plan was for us to meet with and agree to take some Devore defectors with us when we left. Nerha explained that apart from helping them, they would be able to help us too. Four of them were ex-military who would be invaluable to us if we were stopped and questioned. There were sixteen in total – eight men, three women and five children. All the men would wear uniforms in case we were stopped. I agreed immediately. It was a small way to repay these wonderful people.

I also asked my dear friend a favour and handed him a small data chip with some instructions. He read it, a smile spreading over his face and nodded. He gave me his word and promised that it would be done.

The night before we left, Nerha and I lay together in bed and held each other. There was no need for words. For the first and only time, he told me he loved me. I told him I loved him too. It was pure and real and I cried. He was a father, friend and saviour all rolled into one and I knew I would never forget him. I was his friend and the daughter he would never have.

It all moved quickly after that. And in the end, it WAS simple. That was the beauty of it. Anything complicated would have drawn attention and doomed us to failure. Nerha helped me ‘convey’ to my people to be ready, as well as relaying instructions to ‘undercover’ guards to speak to a few of my crew directly and convey my message, just to make sure. After that, it was a bush telegraph system. They made sure they were together in small but close groups, unnoticed by the guards who saw them as all the same – just bodies to be worked to death and then tossed aside.

Naomi was first to be ‘snatched’ – not missed from the large group of domestics at the building where she was made work. Neelix was next – extracted from the facility he’d been placed in – slowly being drained of his knowledge of neighbouring space and races until he outlived his usefulness. And then those ‘friends’, disguised as guards, simply walked the crew out. Nerha’s ‘guards’ had even slipped into the camps on and off for a time before the escape to appear familiar. They just walked them out as a ‘work detail’ – a regular sight. No questions were asked by the real guards who couldn’t have cared less.

At the ship, because it was one of their non work days as we’d known in advance, no one saw the crew and I board Voyager. There was no one there to see us. There was no time for greetings or hugs. Too much was at stake.

Nerha and I had said our tearful goodbyes earlier that morning and I was an emotional wreak, fighting with everything I had to keep a lid on my feelings. I knew they all sensed it from me but no one spoke of it or asked me anything. I remember Chakotay watching me closely but he simply conveyed his support and understanding to me. We all prayed there would be time later for healing.

I could barely swallow past the lump in my throat as I watched them all snap back to what they’d been before, as they fought to bring our home back online. God love them - their poor hands and bare feet – littered with open cuts, blisters and weeping sores - scarred, skin and nails split – bleeding – infected cuts oozing pus – their faces, arms and legs cut and bruised and that was just what was visible – their hair matted and probably harbouring lice which hopefully the biofilters had taken care of. Their eyes were red, sore and swollen from the dust, probably infected also. And they actually apologized for, in their words, their ‘filthy and smelly state’. Despite all that, they paid no heed to their injuries as they worked, yet I knew the pain they were suffering because I could feel it through the link. They were malnourished, filthy and sickly and wore rags which only covered some of their cuts, scars and bruises but I’d never seen a finer bunch of people nor been more proud of a crew as I was of them at that moment. B’Elanna, a very subdued B’Elanna, waited until the last second to power up the engines in order to avoid attention or detection. No one seemed to notice though. Sensors didn’t show any troops swarming down on us and no weapons fire was detected.

And then our darling Voyager lifted off and I didn’t even try and hide my tears. No one else did either. I felt Chakotay’s hand reach for mine and mine met his halfway. And protocol be damned, he pulled me into his arms and hugged me. I embraced him right back.

Almost immediately we pulled back, each understanding that now was not the time. I forced myself into captain mode, desperately shutting off what we’d been through and drew on all my training and experience instead. Starfleet did well by its people – they taught and trained us to the highest standards and it was still there when needed. Without words but with unspoken understanding, we all worked together, as we always had. I had the only comm badge until we could replicate others and our link was vital. Using ship wide announcements would have been too confusing. Our battle ready, armed and shields up ship, our home, rose up and left the physical side of our horror behind on the planet below. As everything kicked in, I sent my love and thanks to Nerah and I felt his response brush into my mind. Chakotay must have felt it too because he once again squeezed my hand.

Every second I expected a Devore ship to hail us or more likely fire on us. I knew though that we’d all have preferred to die in space rather than on the planet. If we had to die, we’d have preferred to die by other hands, rather than theirs but if it had to have been by their hands, we’d still have preferred that death to be in space. We’d have died together, at least, and would know in those last seconds how we died. I was even prepared to order the self-destruct before letting those bastards onboard again and take us back to that Hell. Being escapees, we’d probably have been shot on the spot but just as likely would have been taken back and made a cruel example of. If we were to die, we’d die in freedom and not as prisoners.

I paced the Bridge as I’d done a thousand times but never had the stakes been higher. I looked at those of my crew who were on the Bridge with me and fought down my feelings of guilt. I knew that whilst the time on the ship and in Interrogations was probably worst on me, I’d had a time of healing after the Detention Centre’s ‘medical care’ when I was with Nerha that the others hadn’t had. I was clean and well dressed, healthy and well fed but when I looked at all of them, my heart ached.

And then as we soared into open space, the turbo lift doors opened and the three Devore women came in carrying water and food, the children helping them and my tears returned. The men, dressed in uniform, smiled in understanding. We’d spoken of this and I’d forgotten. We’d arranged for supplies and water to be smuggled onto the ship during the previous two nights when the shipyard was unmanned and they’d succeeded in their task. I smiled my thanks to them all, too choked up to speak. And I remembered Nerah’s words that not all Devore were evil.

As an unnaturally subdued Tom moved us further away from Herros Two, I forced myself to concentrate and called for reports. Neelix had been taken to sickbay and I knew some crew were with him. Seven had been sent immediately to regenerate, badly needing it. It would be a blissful escape for her for a while. I knew through the link that she’d barely managed without it at the camp, ordinary rest and sleep not as efficient. She needed her alcove.

I looked at Harry, the shades of the boy deeply buried now, replaced by this physically and emotionally older and wiser, yet battered and scarred man. I so hoped that boy wasn’t too deeply buried. I didn’t want to face the total destruction of that innocence and what was before.

Time passed and I continued my pacing, unable to sit in my chair. Some strange part of me felt that if I stopped pacing and sat, Voyager would stop moving. Chakotay understood and just let me.

After a few hours, I allowed myself to slow my pacing but I still couldn’t relax. I knew I wouldn’t relax until we cleared Devore space. Hell, I didn’t think I’d relax until we reached Earth.

This time when the lift doors opened, I saw Tal Celes come onto the Bridge. I sensed an excitement in her but it wasn’t until she opened her hand that I understood. Lying on the palm of her hand was the Doctor’s Emitter. It had simply been left lying on a desk in Sickbay. She smiled at me and told me that she’d spoken with B’Elanna who had told her that she had a backup to the Doctor’s Program locked away. She’d get to it as soon as she could leave engineering. At that moment I invented a new Bridge code – GCHT – Grab Chakotay’s Hand Time.

As we moved further away, we encountered a Devore ship and my heart almost stopped. Our friends instantly went into action, shouting at the crew to get to the Ready Room. Our shields were still fully raised and would hopefully help to deflect any scans which might be taken. We’d have fought as a last resort if we’d had to but it would have drawn too much attention and brought other ships. Instead, our uniformed Devore took up stations and I slid down behind a console. What followed was a stunning display as our people dismissed the hailing Devore officer with an almost bored attitude. Within minutes we were on our way again, leaving me sitting on the floor shaking and in shock, not believing it could have been that easy.

With sensors telling us that the space ahead was clear for the moment, I finally left the Bridge. Every part of the ship brought back memories both good and bad to me – memories of good times before this nightmare and the bad when those bastards had taken the ship. I prayed the good would eventually obliterate the bad and bring a healing we all so badly needed.

I stopped at Sickbay first and saw Neelix and it took every ounce of strength I had. I threw my arms around him and just held on for several minutes. When I pulled back and we locked eyes, everything was said through our minds and I was so grateful that our link was still there.

Once off the bridge and having seen Neelix, I suddenly became obsessed with needing to know what had happened to his hands and tongue, not wanting those bastards to have them. As I toured the ship, I knew this was my way to avoid the horrible memories of seeing his torture and it focused my thoughts away from that for a while. I worried about them having just been thrown somewhere, rotting away where they could be found by someone, although as awful as it sounds, I’m sure there would’ve been a smell which even the biofilters and recycling air couldn’t have coped with. Ordering a search was impossible. They had enough to cope with knowing what had happened to their friend and dealing with their own recovery. None of them needed to see that and I especially worried about Naomi finding them if they were still on the ship. That fear consumed me because I knew she’d have immediately recognized what she was looking at. I fought to control and hide my thoughts, to shield the others from them as I made my way around, covertly searching. 

I covered as much of the ship as I could, trying desperately to touch everyone. I found here too that no words were needed. B’Elanna simply grabbed me and squeezed hard for as long as she could. And I was so grateful to feel the vibrant woman I’d known just below the surface. I knew she’d be back. It would just take a little time – time we’d all need.

Another shock awaited us later when we made time to check more of the ship. We were all stunned to find our belongings still in our quarters. They’d rifled through them, tossed stuff around, broken a few things, but then had simply left them there. They meant that little to them. My Ready Room was the same. The desk drawers had been turned out and pushed aside but nothing important was missing. Only one drawer was in place. Inside it I found the large pile of our confiscated comm badges, carelessly thrown there. Finding them no longer surprised me. As I looked around, I smiled at my wall hangings, still there which I’d already seen. Even that damned coffee cup was still there. I knew I hadn’t last used it so I threw it against the wall then picked up the pieces and recycled them. It felt good.

I had to give total credit to the crew as we crossed Devore space. Everyone was terrified and it was so hard to see Devore uniforms on the ship again. I even found it difficult and I’d come to know these men. They were understanding, to say the least, and tried to stay off the Bridge and camped out in Chakotay’s office at first, having their meals brought to them. In no time though, my wonderful crew arranged quarters for them, included them in ship’s life and moved past it. Another GCHT.

I’d expected them all to almost live in the showers once we got underway, craving water showers over sonic ones. Strangely though, the need to preserve water was one of the last things to leave them, despite there being plenty of water to spare, covertly piped on board by our friends. They did so much for us. They were right though to be conservative with our water until we left Devore space.

Twice more we were hailed by passing Devore ships and each time my heart almost stopped, but as before our friends saved us. The hailing ships simply saw fellow soldiers and moved on. They never even scanned us. I guess it’s true that people simply believe what they see.

As we drew closer to the border of Devore space, we were in good shape. B’Elanna did indeed have a backup to the EMH Program, an exact copy, including his memories. I didn’t ask how she’s managed that. When asked why she had it, she’d been honest and said that she’d always feared decompiling his program in temper some day and needed a backup. I laughed until I cried and then I hugged her.

Our Doctor was just so happy to see us all again that I began to wonder if my Chief Engineer hadn’t altered this version of him in some way. He spent most of his time treating Neelix but made sure that every crew member was taken care of for the terrible treatment they’d received in the camps. He even accepted my promise that I would see him, provided I could go last. I knew I needed some work but I was the least in need, and after a quick scan, he accepted that. Oh, I know I had my scars. The external ones were from their whippings and lashings, the brutal beatings, burns and other tortures, and there were probably broken bones and injuries, especially internal, which, while healed, would not have been to our Doctor’s high standards. The other scars, the memories and mental trauma, I knew would have to wait. I was well aware that I’d deliberately repressed them, even with Nerha, although he’d witnessed some of what I’d endured and I’m sure he’d read much in me yet he’d never intruded. I knew they were there under the surface, albeit in some airtight part of my mind, waiting to come visit me, demanding to be acknowledged. 

Escaping was our best medicine at that time but I knew that afterwards, once the adrenaline wore off, that the trauma would show, either in a hysterical or silent collapse, or it would seep out slowly, leaving an oozing trail behind the one suffering. I knew that I – and we - would have to come face to face with the shuddering, cringe inducing memories of the horrors and traumas we’d endured. In time, we would fight the nightmares and chase down and grasp the dreams and the lives we’d had. I was determined that we would take back what we’d had so cruelly stolen from us…regain it and more.

The Doctor was actually the one to find Neelix’s hands and tongue. He quietly informed me that he’d found them carelessly tossed into a stasis unit, which had been kept active thanks to the auxiliary battery power. They were perfectly preserved. Whether they were put there for later examination and study, or because they wanted to avoid a health issue for themselves from contamination, I don’t know. Perhaps they simply forgot or didn’t care, much like the Doctor’s Emitter.

Eventually we reached the border of Devore space and that was actually when I was most afraid. No uniforms had been worn up until then as I’d felt it was too risky. Now I insisted that all crew put theirs on, even though many no longer fit well anymore because of the weight their owners had lost but they’d do for now. We had entered Devore space as a Starfleet crew and I was determined that we would leave it as one. GCHT was getting to be a habit.

Two days later, we dropped our defecting friends off to a passing ship, there to meet them, which would take them on to another ship and so on, until they reached their new home. The location was kept to themselves, for their safety and ours. It was a tearful parting - for me most of all. I’d worked closely with these people but they’d also formed friendships with the rest of the crew. I was sad to see them go but happy that they were free to start a new life.

I finally allowed myself to climb down a few notches from the heightened state I’d been in but it would take a long time before I ever completely relaxed again. Once we’d put a healthy distance between the ship and the border, people slowly began to relax.

I sent up a prayer of thanks for the miracles our Doctor was able to perform on Neelix. Our Devore friends had given us an additional gift before they left. With our permission, they’d downloaded as much data from the Devore world as they could – medical, tactical and so on. It was priceless.

With that knowledge, our own Doctor’s vast experience and the medical help and expertise we received from others along the way, especially from a wonderful and highly medically advanced race we came across called the Kalgari, Neelix made a remarkable recovery. From temporary yet flawless prosthetics to later re-attachment of what had been saved – the regrowth and regeneration of tissue, skin grafts etc, it was nothing short of a miracle.

Neelix’s recovery stunned us all. It wasn’t easy and it was a long and painful road. He had to re-learn how to talk and use his hands, with painful physical therapy, but he bore his pains without complaint. He also had a constant supply of help and support.

In between all that, our wonderful Doctor took care of everyone else as well. The crew had all suffered flea like bites, tiny creatures all over the camps which had constantly bitten them and fed off them, sucking their blood. They were all severely anaemic, with many of the bites inflamed and infected. He even found traces of some unknown plague, along with a disease similar to one on Earth called Weils’s disease, contracted from the urine of rat like creatures in the camps. Thankfully he was able to eradicate these, thanks to the medical data our friends had given us. He treated them all for malnutrition and dozens of other problems, deficiencies, diseases, injuries, various infections, including their eyes, and numerous other problems. Many even had dental problems which he took care of. Their full diet had to be re-introduced slowly though. 

Medically, our crew needed healing and the Doctor worked quietly and sympathetically with them all for their injuries, scars from whippings and the deep cuts from the rocks they had been forced to mine, disease, malnutrition, anaemia and any dental and optical work they needed. Not one cross or sarcastic word passed his lips but his anger at those who’d caused the injuries was barely controlled. Mostly he was working with Neelix but he also closely watched over Seven for the adverse effects she had suffered without her alcove. Thank God her implants held out…again thanks to the Doctor’s great previous care. Also, it seems as if the guards weren’t too rough with her, mostly screaming their orders at her, perhaps because they were scared or wary of what they’d heard of the Borg. Either way, they kept a distance from her.

Chakotay told us that our crew fared better because of the wonderful health and dental care they’d always received from our Doctor. It wasn’t so easy for many in the camps where health and dental problems were rife. The standard of our previous care hit home. The Doctor beamed at that. And I never missed another appointment with him ever again. He was shocked yet delighted by that at first but I think he missed the chase and the fight to get me to sickbay after that, although he’d never admit it.

As time passed, everyone’s story came out. The crew had all been knocked about and beaten on Voyager but Neelix had been the worst injured. On their ship and at Interrogations I’d been the worst. Chakotay was a close second along with the other senior staff not far behind him. The main crew, thank God, hadn’t been as bad and I was so relieved that Tuvok and Vorik hadn’t been singled out. I think the Devore believed that they were like a snake with its head cut off and therefore no threat. They didn’t know my crew at all.

Life at the camps at been hard though. Stories of beatings, starvings, sickness and disease came out slowly and as I heard the full details and read the reports, I knew it was a miracle that no one else had died.

While we fought to get back to who and what we’d been, we also had to accept that we were profoundly changed by what had happened but we knew that all things change a person, the good and the bad.

The biggest difference I saw was with Seven though. She had changed, her previous aloofness greatly diminished. She worked a little more slowly yet just as efficiently, but she’d developed a deep bond with the others she hadn’t had before. They’d all told me how they’d had to make the others in the camp understand through the link why Seven needed to sleep more. The other prisoners knew of the Borg and were at first afraid of her. In the end they understood she was no longer a member of the collective or a danger to them. They understood that she wasn’t being workshy or lazy and helped to hide her from the guards along with the crew. For Seven herself, seeing how they’d cared for her and risked the anger and wrath of the guards so she could get the extra sleep she needed and to protect her, had changed her deeply and she was determined to repay that care and respect. She’d learned what it was to depend and rely on her family and have them be there for her. She’d become as human as they were. Finally, Borg efficiency no longer mattered as much and took second place to being human.

I spent time with Sam as she told me how terrified she’d been for Naomi, so afraid she’d be separated from her daughter and even when with her, wouldn’t be able to protect her. She explained how worried she’d been to send her to her work, never knowing if she’d see her again each day but understanding that it was the lesser of the evils they faced. With Sam’s permission and with her present, I spoke with Naomi. We had a long talk but I saw how affected and changed she was. I tried to tell myself that her family would bring her back but I could see that she’d matured in ways she never should have. I feared her childhood and innocence were also casualties.

One quiet evening, Chakotay invited me to his quarters for a drink but I knew there was more to it as he questioned me gently and quietly. His hands cupped my face, his eyes searching mine as he ‘read’ me. I knew what he sought. To his visible relief, I told him I hadn’t been raped or sexually assaulted or abused like that in any way, bar their groping to instil fear, and thankfully I learned that none of them had been either. I had almost expected Tuvok to want to mind meld with me as we got underway, to assure himself that I was all right, but he seemed content with the knowledge he gleaned from the link.

Chakotay then told me how he’d seen some of the prisoners come together for physical release or comfort or just to feel still alive but it was always with consent. Even in that hell, the prisoners had more respect for each other than their jailers and torturers had. He also told me that he’d seen and heard of pregnancies as a result of this and told me sadly how those women had aborted their babies rather than bring a child into that hell only for it to be taken from them and cruelly killed. And sadly, it was often the abortion itself that killed the women as they had very little medical knowledge on how to perform the procedure. Some bled to death or couldn’t fight the untreated infections which so often resulted from the terminations, performed in such unsanitary conditions with crude, makeshift instruments. There was no medical treatment in the camps. You lived with your injuries and sickness until you died from them. 

He then told me how they’d discovered and become aware of the telepathic link with each other by accident and then learned how to use it from the other prisoners. They’d had no language in common and used basic sign language and their telepathy to understand each other. They’d been stunned to learn that some there had already heard of us, not by name but by stories passed on from others. He told me how they’d tried to reach me, hoping and praying that I could hear them and how happy they’d been when they sensed me still alive. He told me of their deep happiness when they finally ‘heard’ me. Unfortunately, they’d all also felt my pain and despair, my torment and humiliation, and tried hard to comfort me in any way they could through the link. The hardest for him and them though was having heard my screams on the ship.

I still had my whip and lash scars on my back along with my burn scars. Nerha had seen them but while I’d accepted his healer’s necessary treatment of many of my injuries which hadn’t been fully healed in Detentions, I’d refused his offer to have the scars treated and had kept them. They were my link to my beloved crew and their suffering. When I told Chakotay about them, he’d gently removed my shirt with my permission and softly traced his fingers over the scars, his tears unhidden, but I sensed the anger and rage he fought to control. Later, he’d stayed with me when our Doctor had treated them. He’d held my hands, his eyes a mirror to the scars slow removal as our medic worked. I, in turn, sat with him for his own treatments. It was a profound sharing.

I sensed his growing rage and anger though because of what had happened to me. There was almost a murderous edge to it. I watched as he fought what he felt at the pain and suffering he’d ‘shared’ with me through the link…what I knew he felt he should have been able to stop. I know he still heard my screams in his mind. I felt that anger and rage too, for him and the entire crew. I fought hard to quell it in him though. I had enough of my own to try and control but it was over shadowed by my old friend, guilt. My physical torture was worse but shorter, while theirs was so much longer, and there was a growing part of me, a crazy part perhaps, that wished that I’d suffered like they had. I think they call it survivor’s guilt. I remembered nights when I’d lain quietly and safely in bed with Nerha, gently held, roof over my head, warm, clean and with a full stomach, while my crew suffered and I repressed that at the time because I knew if I thought too deeply I’d have been useless to them. I said how, as my life had improved, I knew that theirs was worsening – that as I’d felt their growing despair, they’d felt my improvement and how I’d felt such worry and guilt over that. I’d told him this and was shocked when he’d actually grabbed my shoulders and physically shook me. I clearly remember him almost screaming at me that it wasn’t a “fucking competition”, that we’d all suffered. In the end, that actually calmed us both. He explained to me how it was actually this that had helped them so much – had given them much needed comfort and hope. They all knew my sufferings on the ship and in Interrogations and had felt it alongside their own. It deeply humbled me then when he told me that they’d never once lost faith that we’d escape or lost their belief that their captain would save them. The stronger they’d felt me become, the stronger their faith had grown. I shook my head at that and told him that they’d saved themselves – that we had saved ourselves – all together. He allowed me that. In the end, we agreed to accept that we couldn’t have stopped it, that our escape was a group effort and we just needed now to concentrate on going forward.

As the weeks passed and with our friends off the ship, the telepathic connection between us all faded until it finally disappeared. Everyone felt the same way about that, I believe. While it had served us so well, had in fact saved our lives and brought a great comfort, it was nice to get back to the privacy and freedom of having your mind back to yourself.

As time went by and without our link, small support groups were formed and people began to heal themselves and each other. Seeing others begin to heal, helped me and the senior staff to heal and as the crew saw us healing, that in turn went right back and bolstered them. It was a wonderful recurring circle.

I sat in with them on many of their groups, some big and some small and was always welcomed. They spoke openly with me and without embarrassment. There was no rank in those groups and no uniforms. I got to know them in ways I never had before and I let them get to know me in the same way and just as openly. I lowered the screen I’d always worked behind and let them see parts of the woman behind the Captain – a unique relationship for a crew not seen before or since. The rest of the senior staff also took part in the groups and talked and shared with them about their time in the camps and what they’d all been through. Tuvok and Vorik even tutored us all in healing meditation, which I believe helped them as much as us. They used the groups alongside their own private meditation and healing techniques.

And yet it didn’t change the way the ship ran. Away from the groups, everyone was business as usual and still professional but with a deeper respect and understanding. I know outside of the groups and the ongoing healing taking place, that routine and work was therapy for us all. It was what we’d been, what we were, what we needed to be again and we grasped its return fiercely and tightly. It was our link to our former selves.

What was hardest to deal with and the wound that would never completely heal was from having lost three of our family. They would never be forgotten. We held a deeply moving memorial service for them on the planet of a very friendly race we encountered. They allowed us to land the ship and the entire crew gathered for an afternoon memorial service for all our fallen. We also remembered those who had died in the camps, known and unknown. Those who’d been closest to our lost crew read poems, sang songs and shared stories, all honouring their own customs and beliefs. Our hosts even gave us some young trees to plant and allowed us to place a plague in their memory, promising they would always be tended.

The evening consisted of a quiet and more relaxed remembrance, where stories of our lost friends abounded. Some of our hosts even joined us at our insistence. As the sun set, someone sought, and was granted permission, for a campfire. Food and drink was passed around and music was played. Holoimages of our friends were shown, passed hand to hand, and many memories were shared as they were remembered with love and smiles, alongside many tears. We celebrated their lives and honoured the part of them they had shared with us. It was a healing we needed and I think our fallen friends would have approved.

As we broke orbit and moved on, I became aware that our crew was struggling from survivor guilt for those left behind in the camps. Our remembrance of them at our memorial service had brought it out more. I had only thought about my own for a while which added more guilt to my pile. I quickly realized how deep that same emotion ran in them all, in a way I couldn’t share. They’d gotten to know others in the camps, had helped them and been helped by them and then to have just disappeared, leaving them behind, was hard to deal with. To know that those other prisoners were all still there and continuing to suffer and die was hard to take and they struggled with it, even though realistically knowing there was nothing they could do for them. They constantly thought of the inmates they’d left behind, the ones still there, suffering day to day and the unknown others joining them all the time. All they could do was use the knowledge of the sad fact that they’d hopefully have been quickly forgotten by the others because that was the way of life there. People came and went every day, were taken to other camps or died. Mostly though with the other prisoners, it was just too emotionally risky to form bonds. Dealing with established relationships was all they could cope with. They helped each other but rarely made friends or formed relationships. It was too hard, too painful and too dangerous. Once again, the groups helped and I think they all felt a little better when I told them about Nerha and his friends and the help they tried to give.

Slowly, over time, I began to see more smiles and hear laughter around the ship and my heart sang. I knew we were finally going to make it though when I heard that Tom had started up his betting pools again. Best of all was seeing my greatest fear come to nothing. I gloried when I heard Naomi’s laughter once more ringing out throughout the ship. We all did. Her sweet soul hadn’t been destroyed.

I invited B’Elanna to my quarters for dinner one night, needing to spend some real time with her, to try and find the woman I’d known before. I needed a woman friend too and I was sure she did as well. She spoke to me into the early hours that night about their time in the camps and gave me details of their lives there I knew Chakotay would try and spare me.

She said that some there were family units, how she believed they were put together in the belief that one would never try to escape and leave the others behind but how at least having loved ones was some comfort. She told me how hard and back breaking the work had been – long hours under the baking sun, the sharp rocks they mined cutting into their unprotected flesh. The Devore were never exactly going to issue gloves or shoes to their prisoners, nor anything to protect their eyes or keep the hot sun off. The food had been slop with little water available and no rest or break from the heavy toil. The guards had constantly lashed out with batons or whips for no reason other than their own boredom or viciousness. She said she felt that the guards hated and resented duty in the camps and therefore took it out on the prisoners. No one questioned prisoner deaths or treatment and the guards were answerable to no one. They didn’t care if someone died, knowing they were easily replaced and wouldn’t be missed. She softly spoke of how they’d witnessed many deaths, including children. The guards had simply made the others pull the bodies to a deep pit and thrown sand and stones over them.

She told me how all the prisoners had tried to hide and support those who collapsed from the hunger, thirst and gruelling work in the brutal regime that existed there. She spoke also of how any semblance of privacy had been just a memory and how they’d had to live on top of each other. She related how they’d been crowded into bunks in wooden sheds, men and women together, no allowances made for gender or age. She told me how hot it had been during the day and yet freezing cold at night. Blankets were unheard of. When they’d huddled together in their bunks for body heat, this was the main way the fleas spread. Trying to find some warmth was more important than any embarrassment that was felt. It was also for comfort and it was usually then that some would break down, crying into the night in their misery. Sometimes, someone would try and comfort them, if they could summon the energy to move. As she spoke of that comfort, I claimed some of it for myself with the knowledge that they’d at least been together. 

She told me how they’d only had the tattered rags they stood up in and of the terrible and constant stench, there being no water to spare or any place to wash anything, including themselves, and nothing to change into anyway. Going unwashed was better than trying to clean themselves in filthy water and either way soap was unheard of there. And she spoke of how basic bodily functions like toileting was managed wherever you could get a space to dig a hole in the ground, diarrhoea being a major and constant problem. They’d worked together for that, each trying to provide a modicum of privacy for each other. With all of that, disease spread rapidly.

She also told me how hard it had been and how embarrassing some things were for the women in front of the men, especially if they’d had their periods…how they’d had nothing of sanitary protection and had simply had to ‘let it happen’. At first they’d tried to find rags to use but that had meant needing water to wash them out which was too valuable a commodity. The meagre supply there was in the camps was needed for drinking. They also learned quickly that having the soiled rags in place was more likely to cause infections for which there wasn’t going to be treatment. They had enough to cope with. So they’d learned to swallow their pride and shame and try to ignore what was happening. Most there went without underwear for the same reasons. They either didn’t have any or knew it was too much of a health risk to keep wearing the same ones all the time. I’d been lucky in that regard. I know I’d had periods at Nerha’s house but I’d quietly and privately taken care of myself. He’d wordlessly left me clothing and toiletries he knew I’d need, I guess what he’d learned from his late wife, but hadn’t spoken of it. I don’t know if I had anything like that during my time on the ship, at Interrogations or at the Detention Centre. Anything resembling it could just as easily have been internal bleeding from the beatings or hidden when my body would just let go. I was too busy trying to survive to even think about something like that. My tormentors obviously thought the same or they’d have used it as something else to mock me about or with.

She whispered how they had all looked the same – were the same – how there was no race, no gender, no age – just all living creatures, fighting to see the next day – the next hour.

She explained that there was little dignity left in the camps except what they fought to hold onto inside themselves and in their memory. She confided in me her own despair and tried to joke in order to hide her tears at how they’d reached a stage where they no longer smelled each other. In the end, she didn’t hide her tears from me, just as I let her see mine as she spoke of the deep shame they’d all felt but how good our men had been with our women and vice versa – how they’d looked out for each other and despite their own suffering, still tried to help the others there. Only looking out for yourself would have been understandable and excusable but people did help each other. She told me of the deep respect between the prisoners, with any children there being shielded as much as possible and always being pushed forward for domestic service when it was wanted, despite it meaning that they were out of sight and away from their parents while working. It was preferable to the hard, physical labour they wouldn’t have survived in the hot sun all day. She told me how Naomi was luckily taken with those groups and I was so grateful we hadn’t had other children on the crew. I shuddered to think what would have happened to them or any babies we could have had. B’Elanna also told me how they’d protected Seven, knowing that she needed extra sleep because she was unable to regenerate and how our Borg had developed an even more human connection with them all.

Finally, she told me how, towards the end, they’d all worked hard to shield their thoughts of escape from the others there. Nerha had taught me how to do that to some extent and I’d passed that on to my crew. It would have been too risky otherwise. I always worried that someone in desperation at the camps would inform on them. We kept this up as long as possible later to shield our escape on the ship in case the Devore came after us. I guess if someone there did know or suspect, they didn’t share that knowledge. For all we knew, others had escaped before us and if so, I hope they succeeded. I hope they continue to do so. I hope we inspired them and gave them hope.

B’Elanna and I hugged and cried together and shared our deep pride in our family, and a lifelong friendship and bond was born between us that night.

After my time with B’Elanna and finally feeling the time was right, I invited Chakotay to my quarters for dinner the next night. It still felt so strange to do something that before had been so normal, but normal was good. Normal was what we all needed.

We’d eaten slowly and made small talk and I knew it felt as strange to him as it did to me. As we sat back on the sofa afterwards, he’d admitted that, like me, he still had trouble believing we were where we were.

And then I told him my insights and the thoughts I hadn’t had time to sift through. These had come to me when I’d allowed them to show themselves as I’d finally allowed myself to soak in my first bath back on Voyager earlier in the week.

I told him that I believed we were too big a group – too many together for them to really handle – so they concentrated mostly on the senior staff and me. I shared some of what B’Elanna had told me about the family groups and how they were probably used to dealing only with smaller groups. And then I told him that I believed it was all down to arrogance – how I felt it was mine that had gotten us caught but also gotten me through afterwards. I also told him that it was, to my mind, arrogance on their part that had helped us escape. I told him it was all in the chase for them, that once they caught who they were after, they lost interest. They were so sure that no one was watching – no one daring to go against them. They no longer thought about nor cared what happened to those they caught. They believed that once caught, their prisoners were finished and would never be a threat. They just moved on to the next ship – the next chase or hunt.

I told him that once on Herros Two, we no longer mattered – no longer probably entered their thoughts. I said that the last I’d seen of Kashyk had been in my Ready Room and the last of Prax at Interrogations. After that, in their minds, I believed they’d considered their work done. Even Voyager had waned from their interest. Anything new to them became old very quickly. 

Chakotay agreed with my assessment and we talked long into the night about it. I told him everything, despite the pain it caused him. It was selfish of me but he wanted and needed to know. And I told him about Nerha and the relationship we’d shared, a lot of which he’d already sensed anyway. I spared him no detail because I also wanted him to know it all. I needed him to know. I knew that no one else, not even myself, could build me back up to what I had to be to get us home so he needed to know everything. He, in turn, told me of his time there.

Chakotay and I talked for long hours. We spoke honestly and spared no details. It was damned hard and painful, not just to remember but to hear what the other had been through. We ‘knew’ much of it already because of the link but we needed to talk about it too, sharing eye contact and physical touch. It was the only way to really exorcise the demons that haunted us. Talking and sharing in the groups was wonderful but one to one with each other was what Chakotay called ‘the deep tissue work’. I know the others worked through it all in the same way. It was like attending school or classes with the groups but one to one was like homework or practice of the learned skill at home, where the real work took place.

In the end, we bared our souls to each other. It helped cleanse us and added more healing to our damaged souls and it also brought us closer to each other than we’d ever been.

Our dinners returned to their regularly scheduled program after that night but we had changed. As we travelled home, I knew it could go either way for me because of all that had happened. Either I’d be too cautious after everything or I’d believe myself invincible. As it turned out, I was no longer afraid. I began to lose my fear, believing that after the Devore we could survive anything. That worried Chakotay sick until he finally called me on it and convinced me to pull back. I actually listened to him and took his advice which I think shocked him more than anything.

I wasn’t alone in that though. All the way home, I think we all felt that if we’d survived the Devore, anything was possible. That belief was like added power to the warp core. However, after Chakotay’s talk with me, I spoke to them about still needing to be cautious and not being over confident.

Chakotay kept me sane out there but then he always had. We learned from what had happened and we learned from each other and the crew. Everyone knew everyone else’s story and our bonds deepened. We still retained our Starfleet principles and ran the ship much like before. It had to be that way. We needed the structure. We also needed each other though, but it was different now. What happened created an untenable bond between us that we all knew would never be broken.

I was no longer the fool I had been. I’d seen what could be lost so easily and refused to waste any more of my life.

So, I shocked the hell out of Chakotay when I came to him one night in his quarters. I had dressed casually and brought wine. I didn’t mince my words and simply told him that I didn’t want to waste any more time or follow protocols that could never have been written with us in mind. I told him that I loved him and that I knew he loved me and that it was time we did something about it…that it was time we got together and started making love and then making a marriage and babies.

He never missed a beat and had simply asked if I wanted to drink the wine first or after. 

* * *

I begin my way back to the present with a few stops along the way. I now know and believe many things.

I look back and wonder…ask myself how I and we survived it all - how we got through it. The answers are legion. Sheer bloody mindedness and determination, sheer will, strength of character, individually and collectively, the will to live, to survive, to beat them, to get home, to complete the journey, to do it for the ones who wouldn’t be able to, to survive for family, those on Earth and those on Voyager, for ourselves, for each other, to win, faith in our Gods, however we believed, sheer good luck. Hate is a powerful force. All of that was our minds though. I have no idea how our bodies withstood it. I guess our minds were controlling them and were stronger…as well as our previous good health and strength which was a wonderful foundation.

I know…I believe…that had I been taken some place else or by anyone other than Nerha, there almost certainly wouldn’t have been any escape, or that without our ‘link’, hope would have left – and then we’d have died. I know it was a damn miracle that we were kept in the same settlement, by some Deity, by whatever Gods watch over Starship Captains and their crews, by luck, by their incompetence or laziness or whatever else. I know well to accept it and not question it.

In the end, there was such a deeper closeness between our crew, our family, than had already been there, that was formed because of what happened on that planet and in those two camps.

I know that there is no crew in the history of Starfleet that will ever be bound to each other as we were and still remain.

I know that I’d underestimated them all and their strength and will to survive along with their ability to be there for each other. I knew their Starfleet and Maquis training was the best but it was our added Delta Quadrant abilities, experience and training and the bonds we shared that saved us, along with the link. I learned how strong the glue was that held us all together. Many of them even gave lectures and taught classes at the Academy when we returned on what they’d learned and the waiting lists for those were the longest in the Academy’s history. They were even recorded and are still played to Cadets and Admirals alike to this day. Crews today are what they are because of what ours taught them. We truly became a blueprint for future generations. I’m so very proud of them all and I’ll never tire of, or stop telling them, that.

Starfleet re-evaluated their policy on rotating crews. They’d always believed that just being Starfleet was enough to bond a crew and always feared a crew getting too familiar with each other. We taught and showed them differently. Oh, it was OK for short hops but for longer trips, they went our way.

I know that while we lost people out there, through accident or murder like Joe Carey and those by the Devore, Kashyk came closest to destroying us all. I draw on that constantly. He ‘came close’ but he didn’t succeed.

And I know that there’s not one crew member who’s not in touch with everyone else. Of course, some are that bit closer than others but there will always be a deep unbreakable bond between every single one of us. Our support network still continues back here and always will. There’s always someone at the end of a comm link at any time of the day or night, or someone who will be there within a few minutes if needed.

We all needed and received professional counselling when we returned. It wasn’t a choice but we’d all have sought it anyway. Our own self-help had gotten us through out there but once we reached home, I saw it for the sticking plaster it had been. The need to cope had been a scaffold in some ways and once back on Earth, it collapsed. It showed us that what we thought we’d dealt with was still there in many ways.

Several of the crew even got Starfleet to give over a section of the grounds to erect a memorial garden and monument, to remember our own lost and to include those who had died in the camps. They formed a rota and constantly plant and tend it. It’s a beautiful and peaceful place – for the families and for us.

My nightmares have mostly left me over the years. And while the memories will always be there and I can never forget those most likely still in the camps which probably still exist, I can successfully deal with them. Now I only allow myself to think of those who helped us, and especially Nerha.

After we got home, we all stayed with Starfleet, needing to remain together in any way despite different assignments but we all opted to stay on Earth, no longer having any yearning for space travel. However, rank became a thing of the past between us all outside ‘work’. We’re all on first name terms with each other. Our children all know each other, behaving like siblings and the next generation acts exactly the same way. We’re one big family. Previous relationships which had existed before we were ‘out there’ didn’t survive when we got back, outside of parents and children. We’re a unique club because no one else can ever understand what we went through. It’s the old ‘you had to be there’. Some of those deeper bonds from the camps continued long after we got back to the ship. I smile softly as I realize that I’ve lost count of the number of marriages I’ve performed. No one married outside or paired up with any ‘outsiders’. We all needed partners who understood us. We didn’t want or need to spend our lives trying to explain the unexplainable to those who could never understand or get the ‘in jokes’ and meanings. In some ways, it’s like we still have that telepathic link.

I think of Nerha again, most surely dead by now and I pray he’s at peace with his wonderful Sela. I remember how he took my data chip and gave me his promise to have it sent to Kashyk when the time was right. I know that he’d have made a backup plan that if he died, another would have completed the mission so it’s safe to believe that ‘the Inspector’ has received it by now. He’ll know we got away and out of Devore space. I doubt he’s dead. He was the type who made sure that those beneath him would do the dying for him.

I delight in the knowledge that he will never know exactly how we did it and he’ll never know if we made it home and that will eat at him. I pray he never has another moment’s peace knowing there was always one ship that beat him – that he’ll never have his perfect record – him or Prax.

I would love to have seen his face with all that. I vaguely wonder what he’s like now if he’s still alive – if he’s mellowed at all with age. But I doubt it. Leopards and spots. I wonder what Devore Hell is like.

That kind of evil can never be tempered – those kinds of sins can never be absolved. I know that compassion and pity were alien concepts to them. There was never any semblance of empathy. They didn’t see the lives they destroyed and ripped asunder. They didn’t consider the families they tore apart. They didn’t see the love, and the hopes and dreams, that their victims had. 

They saw fear and despair and fed off it, probably got off on it. Maybe that was the sexual pleasure they derived – watching the pain they created and not from the actual physical act against us which was thankfully beneath them. Their soldiers…and Prax in particular…so enjoyed the pain and suffering they inflicted – they enjoyed the sadistic power they held. It was a major perk of the job for them.

Theirs was a world built on fear and paranoia and the blood of innocents. Our only use to them was to suffer and be worked to death. It sickens me that they could be so proud of that.

Strangely, what haunts me the most now is not what was. It’s what could have been – what nearly was. The callous disregard… We meant nothing to him outside of our capture. He probably never thought of us again because we meant so little to him. Once he’d dispatched us, he’d have simply moved on to the next…and the next. All those lives he destroyed and no thought for them afterwards. And it’s not arrogance that eats at me because we meant nothing. It’s not ego and the belief that we should have stayed in his mind over the years. It’s the feelings of hopelessness and utter despair that I tasted of what could so easily have been. I can come to terms with what happened and all that pain and suffering but not with what could have been – the total failure – the ending of it all there with no one ever knowing what happened to us.

What’s hardest to accept is that only we’d have known what happened to us. No one else would have. Oh, those bastards would have known – they’d have known, but our loved ones wouldn’t have. They’d never have known where or when. They’d never have known how, which would probably have been for the better even though not knowing is hard to live with because the imagination is often worse than the facts. But to have died so worthlessly and needlessly out there, with no loving hand to hold ours as we left this life, even if that passing would have been a release and sadly welcomed. That’s the hardest to bear. We probably wouldn’t have even known what happened to each other. Maybe some at the camps might have – could possibly have witnessed a death – but not all of us. Certainly not me and Chakotay and those closest to me. I guess pain and fear would have registered with each other through the link and then there would have been nothing, just an endless, painful silence and emptiness that would haunt those still left. The saddest would have been that we’d have died nameless, unknown and forgotten. That is what will always wake me screaming at night far more – the fact that I could so easily have failed them.

I know at this juncture, my only thoughts and concerns should be that we escaped, that we made it back and got home. All else should be left out there but…oh so much easier said than done, despite the counselling I finally agreed to. It’s over, gone, finished, done, all those words we used – well, learned to use - and I have to let it go and look to the future. I need to remember that. I still need to learn to do that more, even after all this time.

Oh I believe he’ll learn of our escape and it will, as Tom would say, ‘piss him off’ but that’s not enough for me. A big part of me wants to see him really suffer but I know that’s unlikely. This is the best I’m going to get – and I hate that he has brought that out in me. I never wanted to be vindictive or to hate a person – never wanted to crave revenge. I do try and fight it but I’ll never forget or forgive. That truly is beyond me.

He’ll never have had regrets or remorse or any of those things. He’ll never have felt any of that. Those emotions were more alien to him than we were. Of course, he’ll also never have known what we had as a group…as a family – the love, loyalty and respect – and he was the poorer for that. I believe what we had and still have was strong enough to bring down the entire Devore Imperium.

The only thing which sustains me is the self-conjured hope that he knows, that at least with us, with one ship, he failed. He didn’t achieve this spotless record. There will always be us – that one that got away - that beat him. I feed on that. It’s the salve for my wound that I still struggle to heal. I want us to haunt him in his final days but I’ll settle for him knowing that his record was not unblemished…that there was ONE failure on his part.

We saw ourselves as special and unique but to them we were just another group to hunt down, take into custody and then forget about as they moved on to the next lot. They saw us as nothing but they were wrong. It was their big mistake. We were the ones who got away and beat them. It was that meaninglessness, to them, that saved us, yet some small part of me angers at the fact that we meant so little. How crazy is that? Their view of us that bothers me so much is a big part of what saved us. Once he had us, he simply forgot about us. He won’t ever forget about us now though.

I want him to remember the name of Voyager and I want him to always remember that there was one ship…one captain and crew - that beat him and got away. I hope my name and his memory of us haunts him to his grave - and after that, I want to think there’s a Devore Hell, but I won’t let that come between me and the Earth Heaven I have here.

I’ve heard so many, top brass to the man on the street, say that it was a miracle that we got out of there…that we survived out there and got home. And they’ve written books and made holovids about it and it’s in the history books. I get angry at it though because they give me too much credit for it all. I want them to see the joint effort that it was. It was also a hell of a lot of luck and the help of damned good friends.

They showered us all with honours and medals and offered us our choice of assignments. Our Doctor is one of the most respected medics on Earth because of the medical knowledge he gained on our journey, medical advances which help so many and are now almost taken for granted. And Neelix. I smile as I always do when I think of our dear friend. We saw him just last week when we had lunch at his restaurant. His business is booming, thank God – and he’s happy. And while he’ll never be completely the same or exactly a hundred percent, he’s damn close. Physically he’s really good, almost back to normal. There are no real visible, and hardly any physical, reminders for our friend anymore. Emotionally he’s doing really well too although I know it’ll always be there, that like the rest of us, the memories will never completely leave. We all help him with that and will continue to do so.

And as to the lost….. I now believe that those we lost are at peace. I believe they’re at peace because they know we got their family home and that we’ll always remember them. Chakotay once told me that there would be generations because of the ones we got home and I see the fruit of that already, some born on Voyager, our own son and daughter amongst that number, and more born on Earth when we got back. The generation following them is already here with more on the way.

* * *

Slowly I come fully back from where I was. The calls of the loons greet me and the solar lights have come on. I sigh and stretch and take in a deep breath of the woodland air. I love our cabin we retired to.

Bare feet padding along the jetty makes me turn my head and I smile up at Chakotay. He returns my smile and leans down to hand me my coffee.

“Where are your thoughts, my love.” I inhale the aroma and take a long drink before I answer him.

“Here – there – and there also.” I see he understands immediately.

He sits down beside me and rubs his hand up and down my leg. “I take it you’re back safely?”

I smile peacefully and nod.

His smile matches mine. “Good. Because here is the best place…the only place.”

I agree. I’d have to be blind not to see that. GCHT.

THE END.


End file.
